This is Trip Taco: Part II from the reproduction of Facebook notes that I've been posting since May 23, 2007.  It's an impromptu but thoughtful account of what I like to call "Trip Taco." I'll post it in three parts correlating with the three general areas that the hand of Trip Taco has touched: "Roadtrippin North America", "Sudamerica de Bus", and "Europa!"

June 28 2007                        La Avelina

            I made it out of the US! Hooray!

We’re currently in an indigenous town by a big ‘ol volcano called Cotopaxi. It’s wicked chilly here, about 60 degree F, and we’re living at about 9,000ft of altitude. My sister and I are staying in a gorgeous hacienda called La Avelina, owned by a friend. There are flowers everywhere and everybody speaks Spanish!

My sister is suffering from a wretched sore throat & altitude sickness, so I’m trying to take care of her as best as I can so that we can go and explore our new surroundings. In a few days we shall be heading to a small town called Baños, about an hour away from here, where my mother is building a small house at the foot of an active volcano. Supposedly there are over 60 active volcanoes in this small country!

Maybe I shall post again in a few days.

-Hasta luego!

July 13 2007                        The Hippiest Hippie Town

            So we arrived in Montañita last night, after about twelve hours of bus riding hell. We didn’t get mobbed, or robbed, or bitten my any giant spiders, so i guess it could have been worse, but I can say for sure that it’s not my preferred mode of travel.

Up until now I’ve been moving back and forth along Ecuador’s pan-American highway from Quito, to la Avelina, to Baños, back to la Avelina, back to Baños... (you get the picture) at about 100 mph in our mom’s friend’s diesel truck that feels like it has absolutely no shocks resistors. My sister and I have been trying to get involved in the life that our mom has created in South America, but it’s been basically insane. She’s trying to build her little home at the foot of a volcano, but her involvement with people in the town (mainly the boyfriend character) is not exactly safe/healthy for her. We’ve spent most of our time waiting for our mother in La Avelina, but now took the initiative to go to the coast ourselves... we simply couldn’t put off our desire for beaches and surfing any longer.

Ecuador is a nation of many faces, far inland (to the eastern areas) there are thick jungles, in the central areas there are cloud forests and highlands where the temperatures reach freezing temperatures, and on the coast (to the west) there are beautiful tropical beaches. For the most part, I’ve felt like an alien in this place because we’ve been surrounded by rapid-speaking indigenous Ecuatorianos, but Montañita’s a whole different world.

From what I’ve experienced so far, Montañita is a small surfing town, overrun by hippie foreigners.... now I don’t mean to imply this as being a bad thing, but mostly what I see are skinny, tall, dreadlocked, semi-stylish, white people trying to survive by selling their trinkets and homemade jewelry along the streets. And it’s a big culture shock after being around the short, poncho-wearing, dark curious faces of the indigenous folk surviving by the laborious work tending to farmland or livestock.

This is Miriah’s second time in Montañita, and so far it seems like a nice place to live like a beach bum for a while, so we hope to find a place to rent for a month. We plan to surf every other day, and eat mainly fruit and bread, so we still have enough money to hop over to Europe around mid-winter.

We spent yesterday apartment-searching and reawakening our surfing muscles. As expected after six years void of surfing, I kind of suck at it. But we’re planning to work out a deal with our new surfer ´amigo´ to get a deal renting on a long-term basis from him. Turns out the renting a surfboard (tableta de surf) may end up being our highest expense here, since a room is less than $5 per day, and a shared meal costs around $2-3. ...and I guess there’s the cost of internet--posting my pics and posts up here for all the world to see.

July 19 2007                        La Fugata

            We’re settling in well here in Montañita, renting a little bungalow for the next month and a couple of surfboards for when the olas (waves) are good.

            We’ve played some beach futbol, done some crazy wild dancing, and even made some friends. A couple nights ago, a bar at the far end of the beach held a fiesta with a giant fugata (bonfire). Normally I don’t get the opportunity to dance much, but when I do... I really dance. We headed to the bar around 11pm and didn’t leave until 4am, yes that’s correct, five straight hours of dancing. Wild, free, crazygonuts dancing. Fortunately we were with some friends who also really like to dance, so we didn’t look like fools all by ourselves. At this fiesta, we learned that the word for brownies in Spanish is the same as in English: one of our friend’s friends spent the night trying to make some money by selling her ´ brownies especiales,´ (special brownies...)but I think they ended up eating most of them, instead of making money.

July 30 2007                        Surfistas

            So today I had to endure the downside to long boarding. Our mother and her friend came out to visit us this weekend (the first time we’d seen them in a few weeks), and they took us to an empty little town down the coast a ways. It’s called Ayampe, and it was supposedly an excellent surf spot.

Miriah and I wanted to take the boards that we’ve been using with us, so we had to sit in the bed of our friend’s truck, hugging our boards for the thirty-minute drive to Ayampe. This friend of ours is the most reckless driver I’ve ever met, so thirty minutes of his speeding around corners, flying across potholes, and nearly being severed in half by our bouncing boards pretty much wore us out before we even got in the water.

In addition to all that and more crummy Ecuatorian ¨summer¨ weather of clouds and rain, we arrived in Ayampe to find choppy waves. I spent about an hour out there, but only caught about two waves and spent the rest of the time being battered by waves and retrieving my giant board that kept being pulled away from me in the maddening currents.

Afterwards we went up to our friend’s hostel to have a bowl of squid and banana soup (believe what you want, but it was really really good). And then we hopped back into the truck, clutching our surfboards. On the upside, we stopped on the way back to pick up a slice of cheesecake for later. There is a little town between Ayampe and Montañita called La Entrada (the entrance). In the town is a small bakery run by a chef who once worked in a Hilton restaurant---so basically his stuff is crazy good.

Anyhow, while the surf wasn’t too hot for us today, we did start our day with a giant pancake filled with fresh fruits and topped with chocolate. Unfortunately I haven’t a foto of that.

            At least every other day we go out surfing in the beach twenty steps away from our cabana. Thursdays we go to the main bar to listen to free live music and we dance our butts off until 4 in the morning. And on most other nights, we enjoy a home cooked dinner at our friends´ house and spend the night watching futbol or laughing at each others attempt to speak English/Spanish in town.

Last week our friends tried to go out to the point at the far end of the beach to catch some fish. When they showed us their fishing pole, we cracked up. ¨en serio,¨ we asked. ¨si!¨ It was about thirty feet of string wrapped around a stick. They stuck little bites of chicken skin onto a couple tiny hooks tied into the string, and threw it out to the sea. We watched them do this over and over for a couple hours, with no luck. Yet there were dozens of fish jumping all around the rocks near us, and we saw a manta ray surface a couple times too. They caught no fish that day, but it was pretty entertaining.

We still have about two more weeks left in this rainy town of Montañita before our rent is up. We don’t know what the plan is next, but perhaps we’ll go south to Vilacamamba or inland to the cities. Then again, we’ve seen a couple of signs around town saying: ¨Seeking English-speaking waitresses¨ --an offer very tempting to us, but would mean spending quite a bit more time in this hippie town.

That’s about all for now. Not too many new adventures, but thanks to all for reading. Ciao—

August 15 2007                        Goodbye to the Coast

            We were swept away from our beloved town of Montañita a couple days ago when our mother came down to visit us. We just hit the end of our one month payment in the damp cabana that we’d been living in. The place was called Vito’s Hostel and was owned by this drug-addict old man who liked to make crude comments and yell at us in the middle of the night about our leaky toilet that wasted his precious water. Anyhow, that’s a little off topic, because a lot more has happened in our time spent in Montañita apart from our nutty landlord.

            After spending so much time there, it felt like we were on familiar terms with quite a bit of the locals. Walking down the main street, we would get smiles, nods, waves, or kiss-on-the-cheek-greetings from many. I got quite comfortable walking our 1k trek barefoot in the sand into town a few times a day to visit with friends, indulge in grilled corn or ice creams, or just wander around.

Last week, a gringo friend from Miami invited us on a fishing trip with the local oyster divers to a nearby beach. It was fairly miserable in the wind and rain and the spraying saltwater, but we had a blast. There were about a dozen little dark-skinned guys in makeshift wetsuits with tall soccer socks under their fins who dove off the boat with their snorkel masks, spears, spear guns, and floating nets. We dropped them off to gather their oysters and octopi while we drove the boat around an island trying to catch some fish by trolling off the back of the boat.

We picked up the divers and their couple hundred giant oysters a couple hours later. Within twenty minutes they cracked open the oysters, sprinkled some squeezed some limes and salt on them and swallowed them for lunch. I didn’t have much of an appetite for these raw delicacies, but Miriah said that they were delicious.

Days later we saw that on the weekends, they push their tricicletas around the town selling oysters and cebiche. Supposedly cebiche is ideal for hangovers, which gives them pretty good business in this party town.

This weekend was a long weekend because of an Ecuatorian holiday on august 10th, so the streets were packed.

Fittingly, the hotspot bar in town had a huuge party over on Saturday, and Miriah and I decided to splurge 5 bucks a piece for tickets. The bar is called Caña Grill, but they also refer to it as: Los Dos Mundos because they divide it into two sections for big parties: live rock-reggae-salsa music and the techno section. It got going around 11pm, when we went into hear the live music. By then it was too crowded to dance, but after the live music we found a perfect spot on a giant stool/small table above the crowd, where Miriah and I danced for about an hour before needing a break.

Then we went through the neon black-lit tunnel over to the techno world, where it was just wild. People were doing all sorts of interpretive crazy dancing to electronic music that never ended. The dance floor was under a giant bungalow roof which had neon streamers draped down... I was wishing that I had my camera because it was basically indescribable. But as one might imagine, we had tons of fun... and didn’t get home until 5am.

  The next day we awoke by noon, and planned to sleep in early that night so we would get up early the next day for surfing. Things ended up not going as planned (normal for Ecuador), which was fine since we could afford to change plans.

A friend of our friends brought out his guitar that evening when we were sitting in town. We moved our crowd to a quieter part of town, in the park, where we sang random oldies and they sang their emotional-filled latin songs. The poor guitar was horribly out of tune with twisted strings. He tried to tune it a couple times, and broke two strings.

Later, they told us of somebody’s private birthday party nearby, which we promptly went to. It was held in a bar that is normally closed this time of the year, and there were about twenty people total there. This time, we stayed out until 6am, and I experienced quite a bit that night. The guy with the guitar showed me how to dance salsa and we swung around the dance floor for hours! That night certainly won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

We were living the dream life.

            Yesterday our mom’s friend drove us back to La Avelina in his truck; eight hours of nutso driving over bumpy Ecuatorian roads. We thought that we were going to die in an accident dozens of times as we tried to close our eyes to keep our minds elsewhere while being jerked around. Apart from the seatbelts cutting into our skin with every bump and the headache that was rising, I already felt homesick for Montanita. The day that we left, I was on the verge of crying thrice.

Today we’re in Quito with our mom, and I think we’ll be heading to Baños again tonight or tomorrow. It sounds like we’ll be in Baños for the next month perhaps we will visit the jungle. I’ll be sure to bring my camera.

While in Montañita, my computer refused to turn on over a week ago. I partly blame it on the damp sea-salty conditions that we were living in, and the crappy ripped movies that didn’t agree with it when we tried to watch them. But now I’m a little bit deprived of writing (obviously, from this massive post).  I’ll post again soon

September 5 2007                        Visiting Quito

            I’ve spent quito a bit of time in Quito lately.

It’s the capital of Ecuador, and is basically a big city. My first impression was that it was muy feo (ugly) because of the traffic and bustling people and looming buildings every which way.

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to discover it on my own, I’m seeing a much more pleasant side of it. There are two main parts that comprise Quito: new town and old town.  ¨New Town¨ (aka La Mariscal) has lots of discotechs, restaurants, internet cafes, and active parks.  ¨Old Town¨ (the historical part) has many of old structures like churches, museums, and statues.  Both are pretty neat places to spend some time walking around--lots to see, hear, taste...

I’m hoping to go to a little town called Mindo, north/west of Quito in the next day or two. It’s famous for a butterfly reserve and national park. I’m excited to do hiking in a new place and to take some nice fotos.

School should be starting. That’s just nuts, but I hope it’s going well for you all—

September 12 2007                        Mindo, Que Lindo!

            Mindo has got to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Thousands of different species of orchids hanging off walls in the streets. Hummingbirds sucking out the sweet nectar. You have to watch your step so you don’t squish any of the many caterpillars creeping along the sidewalks.

And oh my goodness, butterflies everywhere! Seriously. Fluttering in your face, landing on my toes, trapped in the bathroom....

            I visited a butterfly reserve just outside of the small town, where hundreds maybe thousands of butterflies were maintained in a small green house area. There you can actually see the butterflies hatching from their cocoons. Wild, no?

            I had the fortune to watch a giant butterfly hatching-- it was the size of my hand!

Unfortunately, I’m back in Quito. I planned out a great little trip that continued through Mindo, west to the coast, and then following the coast south before coming back inland to my starting point. But I had to get to Quito today to meet some people.

That’s all for now folks—

September 23 2007                        Knews

            So I’ve spent some time traveling alone this past month since my sister took her own little side-trip to go visit her boyfriend in fugly All-American state of Texas. It was a very different experience traveling solo, and I’m not sure I could have made it very far without my lonely planet travel guide (a lifesaver more times that I can count).

I met some interesting folks and got so see some new places. Plus I think my navigational and Spanish skills increased by quite a bit--

In Quito I met this kid, Dylan, (age 19. ok, so he’s hardly younger than me...) who was staying in the same hotel as me a couple weeks back. He saw that I wrote ¨Alaskan¨ nationality in the hotel registration book, and came to say hello. Turns out that he’s from Juneau! And he went on the same AWG Greenland trip as me in 2002, but for soccer instead of skiing. What unlikeliness, right?! It was his first day in Ecuador, the beginning of his three-month solo backpacking journey through Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Sweet! So we spent a day together chatting and wandering around Quito, and I showed him the sights because I was already pretty familiar with the place by then. Plus, we took a bus up to a little touristy town about half an hour away called ¨Mitad del Mundo¨-- it’s famous for being on the center of the earth (0 degrees latitude!).

            Then I went south to do some more exploring on my own and ultimately meet my sister who would be arriving soon.

I went to a mountainous town called Riobamba, and through a large city called Cuenca famous for its old Colonial style buildings and white-washed walls.

            After many bus rides, I got into Guayaquil which is the biggest city Ecuadorian city, and known for being ugly and unsafe. As far as I’m concerned it lived up to that reputation. Still, it had some interesting aspects, like a central park spotted with Iguanas... everywhere, in the trees, in the ponds, on the lawn, shitting on people’s heads from above...

            Finally I met up with Miriah, and we went straight to the coast to spend a couple days in our beloved coastal town of Montañita. It was different coming back there after a month, and it was still pretty rainy. Regardless, we managed to spend a little quality time with old friends and we got one choppy surf session in before catching the 5am bus out of there. Our next 10+ hours were spent bussing it back up to Quito, ug. Now we’re being city chicks for a few days, shooting off dozens of belated email replies, and I’m giving the city tour to my sister.

Well I really can’t say where I’ll be in the near future; Peru sounds good. Supposedly the living expenses are a bit more expensive, and the climate is chillier, but it’s supposed to me beautiful and more cultural than Ecuador.

Ok, hope life’s treating you all well (whoever is still reading these), & ciao for now-

October 7 2007            Per-Who?

            Yep, that’s right I’m in Peru!

I finally got out of my routine of circuiting through the little nation of Ecuador. And although my fingers are freezing down here, it’s pretty great to see some new area. There’s a whole lot more culture to be found here plus the country’s nearly three times larger.

            Ok so let’s see, we started off in the northern coast in Zorritos, a quiet little beach with hardly any tourists. Here a pack of dolphins greeted us the first time we stepped foot on its sandy beach, and later we ventured into the desert hills in search for some mystical parros (mud baths). We came upon these mud pools after about an hour of dusty hiking. At these ¨parros¨ they had signs saying exactly what each of the pools were specialized to help with: strengthening bones, warts, skin, & who knows what else. We were hesitant to take the first steps in, but after we got knee deep, there was no going back. So we lathered up & rolled around like hippos until we were fully coated and darker than the earth.

            After a couple days of peaceful laxing, we moved south to a hopping town called Mancora, known for its sweet surfing & endless sunny days! We took full advantage of both. Resharpening our surfing skills in the morning & getting burnt to a painful extent by walking the beaches in the afternoons. There was only one main break, but it was a sweet clean ride all the way into shore when you could fend off all the other competitive surfers in the water.

It was nearly a Peruvian version of Montañita with artisans & kind of a party attitude. The ¨Piura¨ (PanAmerican Highway) runs straight through the town, buzzing with buses, bicyclists, pedestrians, and mototaxis (a Latin hybrid of motorcycle & buggy carriage).

            We didn’t quite want to leave the sun or the surf, but we were soon on the more south again. Next we were headed to a place famous for having ¨the longest left wave in the world,¨ Puerto Chicama (aka Malabrigo). Miriah & I were super excited for this idea of riding a wave for two kilometers, but we had no idea what we were getting in for. Without realizing, our eight hour bus journey had taken us to the southern part of Peru’s little left side jutt on the Pacific coast--meaning that these waters were now being fed by the Humboldt current (one that I believe comes from the Antarctic), meaning that it’s flipping cooold!.

            Just walking around we had to pull out our fleecy jackets from the bottom of our bags, and the locals said that we would need to rent wetsuits in order to surf here! On our first evening, I rolled around in my hostel cot fighting off stomach flu. But by the next morning we both put on our game faces, pulled on some wetsuits, and followed the friendly locals out to their favorite hot spot about a long barefooted walk down the pebbly beach with our rented boards under arm, looking like lost telletubbies in the borrowed wetsuits.

            The water felt like Alaska. After a couple hours of fighting giant waves and wind sprayed water, rapid strong currents, and Miriah’s toes turning white, we headed in. Each of us caught several waves apiece, but nothing more than a few seconds long-- no 2k rides for us. We learned that cold water surfing in wetsuits is a completely different sport altogether than warm water surfing. And while we felt pretty darned badass for going out there (two days in a row, I might add), we stacked up the boards & said goodbye to Chicama & probably goodbye to surfing too until we start heading north again.

A short bus ride down the Piura took us to another touristy town called Huanchaco. This place is also a big surfing hotspot in the summertime (pretty desolate now), and it still has people who surf traditional long reed boats which were originally used for fishing & transportation.

Plus nearby is one of Peru’s best ruin sites-- of a culture before the Incas, although I can’t remember exactly what the name was. So we spent yesterday just walking around the ruins, recovering from our hardcore surfing sessions. It was pretty amazing to see the remaining intricate designs of fish, birds, and netting carved into their walls.

            And that’s all that has happened so far.. which actually seems like a lot since my last posting. Today we’re headed for Lima, the capital, and then to Cuzco soon after. From Cuzco, we catch a train to the magnificent Machu Picchu--the fourth wonder of the world. We initially didn’t plan on getting that far south, because we only wanted to spend a month en Peru & it’s a little spendy to pay the entrance fee, but everyone here told us that we HAVE to see it. We’ve come so far from Alaska, and are already in Peru. So we’re doin it, darnit.

Ok, I think it’s time for me to stop my mad writing & say ciao for now. Hope all’s well with everyone else & I’m sad to think that I’ll soon be missing the first snowfall in Alaska--perhaps for the first time in my life. So I hope it’s wonderful & somebody tells me how beautiful it is. Take pics for me ok?

Ok, ciao ciao-

October 15 2007            “The Lost City of the Incas”

            So we made it to the ¨4th Man-made Wonder of the World¨! Also voted as one of the ¨New Seven Wonders of the World¨.

Only after a speedy one hour colectivo (shared taxi) to a town called Ollantaytambo (pronounced: Oy-yawn-tie-tambo ...fun word to say). From there a two hour train ride on Peru Rail to Aguas Calientes (“Hot Waters”, the little town below the lost city), then a thirty minute bus ride up a dozen switchbacks straight up the mountain, we arrived at the majestic Incan city in the mountains.

We tried to get the lowest trip fare, so we had lots of transportation changes and only ended up with about four actual hours in the city. We hoped to climb Waynapicchu (the large protruding mountain to one side of the city), which supposedly takes about three hours to completely tour. Thus we began our scramble through the city immediately after stepping off the bus.

We practically ran through the terraces and stone houses over to the Wayna Picchu trail, and booked it up the steep climb at almost 3000m altitude.

            We managed to get up & down in about an hour and a half, which left us with plenty of time to poke around the city to see the old housing structures, sacrificial tables, temples, astronomical tools, sundial... All sorts of amazing stuff.

            Supposedly the city was created around 1450, although it was only ¨officially¨ discovered in 1911 by some American dude. It was created, inhabited, and abandoned all within only 100 years, and then completely lost for centuries due to its hidden location. There are many different stories explaining its mysterious history, but nothing is quite certain about why it was built there and what happened to all of its´ inhabitants. A lot more can be read about it in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu) and other sources, but that’s the entire history lesson I’m going to write today.           

Tomorrow we move south from Cusco towards Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world).

October 27 2007            Sur de Peru

            So we made it to the southern part of Peru that just barely touches Bolivia at Lake Titicaca, known to be the ¨highest major lake in the world¨ at nearly 4,000m altitude.

Here we went on our first official ¨guided tour, ¨ where a boat took us to the Uros Islands (40 man-made floating islands constructed out of tortura reeds) and to stay overnight with a local family on Amanti Island (where Spanish is not even their first language, instead they speak Quetchwa or Aymara).

            Then we booked it down into Bolivia for a couple days, mainly just to get the passports stamped, in a little town called Copacabana. Here we went on a grueling 40k bike ride along bumpy winding paths on no-shock bicycles in strong sunlight

Then back into Peru and up to Arequipa, where we spent a few days in the Colca Canyon-- the second deepest canyon in the world--seems like Peru has quite a few world records!

            Here we got dropped off at a lookout at 4am to watch condors soar. Then hiked into the canyon to spend an evening at an oasis, and then booked it out of there early the next morning after a strong batch of coca tea.

            After an overnight bus, we are now heading slowly back to the coast and hope to try our skills at sand boarding tomorrow in a little town called Huacachina. And that’s all I’ve got time to update for now.  Ciao-

November 12 2007                        Back “Home”

            The last couple adventures in Peru were along coast headed north. In Huancacho, we did manage to try sand boarding, although we were quite disappointed with it and could see why it hadn’t really caught on as a popular sport. The boards hardly slid down the sand, and were nearly impossible to carve. Then again the boards we rented for an hour were pretty low quality, with simple Velcro straps holding our feet on and candle wax rubbed on the base for ´glide´.

            It was a pretty interesting place to see though, an oasis sitting amidst huge sand dunes.

            So we only did a couple runs before moving on. That evening we took buses all the way up to the big city of Lima, where we enjoyed a giggle-filled evening with a few Pisco Sours (the local Peruvian drink of Pisco mixed with raw egg white and limon... it tastes a lot better than it sounds). And ended up getting yelled at for prancing around on the roof of our hostel at 3am.

The next day we took another long night bus back to Mancora, Peru, the familiar surfing town that we enjoyed so much during our first week in Peru. Coincidentally there was a International Female Surf Competition being held there right when we arrived. It was pretty wicked to see these girls carve it up, while the crowd rooted for the local Peruvian favorite, Sofia Milonavich. But unfortunately the Mancora break only bears one wave, and the championship took it up all day long so we didn’t get to do much surfing for ourselves.

It was here where we spent a quiet Halloween, and just chilled for about a week before hopping on another long northern bus ride.

After an amazing month and a half discovering most of the large, culturally rich country of Peru, we returned to Ecuador. Back to the land of US dollars, un-shared taxi cabs, and familiar cities that I could easily find my way around.

We spent a couple days up in Quito, the big city to regroup and re-organize before taking one last bus ride back to our ¨home town” of Montañita. The plan for the next couple months is to stay put in Montañita, enjoy the good summer weather and surf here, and perhaps get a part-time job to earn a bit of cash, or at least hopefully break even with the very minimal spending we do here. Plus, both of us are quite happy to no longer be barely surviving ten hour bus rides every other day.

We got in last Thursday and moved back into our old beach-front bungalow on the tranquil end of the beach. On Friday we took our old boards on in the water and spent over four hours loving the surf. I had forgotten how much fun I could have on my long board on the beach where everyone is not fighting for the same wave and you don’t need to wear some unfitting rented wetsuit. Catching and controlling myself on the waves seemed so much easier and enjoyable this time around. Perhaps it was just a really good day of waves, or perhaps I just never appreciated this enough before. But seriously, I think it may be quite difficult to leave this place when January comes around, and our plane tickets to Europe will be tugging at us to seek new adventures in other parts of the world.

That’s about all for now. I’ll try and make posts here and there, but I may not have too many new photos or adventures to post for awhile, since I plan to be situated and enjoying the easy life in Montañita. Ciao for now-

December 7 2007            The Comfy Life

            Seventy-six sandollars in one pass of the beach from town to our cabaña. I thought of collecting them, but didn’t know what else I could really do with them, except make a mongous pile of sandy green disks on my porch.

            I’ve been living a dreadless and meatless life here in Montañita for the past month or so, where donkeys roam the streets and rotten sea turtles wash in with the tide.

Here, I’ve made a pretty content lifestyle. Nearly four weeks ago, I decided to find a job to keep myself occupied and to make a little teensy bit of income since I planned on staying around here for such at least a couple months. I didn’t expect to find any professional job here, or one that I could put my handy-dandy college degree to use at, so I asked around in a few restaurants to see what we could do for each other. I ended up in the most poppin restaurant bar in town, called Hola Olas (which translates to ´Hello Waves´ in Spanish). I had no idea what to expect, or how in the world I was going to manage talking to customers and working with people using my poor Spanish.

The Israeli owners offered me the basic rate of $5 per day (Five. Dollars. Per. Day. Almost half of the minimum wage PER HOUR back in Alaska), but I could rake in a decent amount of tips per day (anywhere between $4-18, depending on how cute I was and how many tables I busted my butt waiting on). The first week was pretty much hell for me, running around from 5pm to 3 in the morning, being treated like a servant, then making the 15 minute walk home in the dark, and being too dead tired the next day to really do much of anything. But after some time passed, and the owners grew to value my presence and hard work, and I learned not to get stressed out from the people I worked with, things got better. I was able to convince the majority of the customers and I spoke fluent Spanish and my little local coworkers began trusting me and joking around with me as ´Aleta de Tiburon´. I had the restaurant under my thumb and actually began enjoying my 13 hour nonstop work days.

The only real complaint I have now is that we are severely understaffed, so with only four meseras (waiters), I’ve had to work 5-6 days a week since I’ve started, which is much much more than I want to be working. Because this only leaves 1 or 2 days free to spend my afternoons in the water surfing my heart out or spending time with my sister and playing soccer with my ol buddies or dancing till dawn. Once we can pick up some more staff, things should be pretty swell.

This past Tuesday was one of my few ´dia libres´ (free days). I spent about three hours surfing some fabulous waves on my gigantic lovely long board, and actually got a few compliments from some of the local hot surfers in town about my riding. And by the evening, my sister and I went into town to meet up with some newfound Canadian friends who also happen to play bluegrass (one of my sister’s specialties). So she cracked open her dusty violin case and joined them with banjo and guitar playing in the streets. It didn’t take long before a small crowd gathered to hear this foreign music, and the owner of my restaurant actually invited them to play inside later on, rewarding them with a free round of beer afterwards.

            I think they’re going to play again tonight, so I better wrap this up and check it out. So, sorry for not posting anything for awhile--I’ve been pretty busy with work and haven’t really gone on any photo-worthy adventures in awhile. Still, my gypsy life on the road is pretty sweet.

So ciao for now, and if I don’t post anything for another four weeks, HAPPY HAPPY HOLIDAYS and enjoy the snow for me if you’re anywhere near it!!!

January 14 2008            Tired

            Well, it’s been another month or so since I’ve updated with my life here, and I can’t really say that I’ve done anything too new or exciting.

Christmas came and went without really affecting me much at all, because of all my long work shifts. Lots of work and time gone, but a decent amount of tips came in-- honestly I was basically just waiting for the holidays to be over so all the tourists would go home and I could enjoy the little surfing town all to myself again.

            On New Years morning my dad came down for a surprise visit which shocked the heck outta me when he showed up in my restaurant on a crazy stressed out morning shift. Fortunately he was able to convince me to demand time off of work to pass come quality family time with him and my sister.

We did some surfing together and visited Isla de la Plata just a few hours north of Montañita. It is sometimes referred to as 'the poor man’s Galapagos' -- so of course we had to check it out since none of us could quite afford a trip to the real Galapagos.

            I can’t believe how time has passed, but it seems that January 23rd is coming up in just a little over a week. This day is when my sister and I are scheduled to fly out of our little simplistic life in Sudamerica, our flight will take us to Rome, Italy! I think we’re both about ready to leave Montañita, although I’m sure I will miss a lot of things about this place: the sun, beach, friends, fruit, and the barefootedness...

It will be winter time when we arrive in Rome, so I think it will feel good to breath fresh crisp air again and see some new culture. Neither of us have a very large budget for this leg of the trip so we’ve no idea how long we’ll last in Europa, but I don’t feel that I am ready to go back to Alaska yet, so I think I may keep drifting around for as long as I can.

Once I can fix my camera (which decided to kaput on me recently), I will be sure to take lots of fotos of our next new adventure.  And one of the other pluses I’m looking forward to in Europe are cozy Internet cafes to write and post updates in.

So I hope everyone’s holidays we lovely and Ciao for now—